The PlayStation Partner Awards take place every year and the Japan/Asia region has just picked their winners. Final Fantasy VII Remake was one of a total of 12 games developed in the region to receive awards. Many shows rely on voting or critic opinion for their award winners. Instead, the PlayStation Partner Awards main criteria is sales, with some other factors coming into play.
The Grand Award is given to the top three titles with the highest worldwide sales from October 2019 and September 2020. One of the three winners is Final Fantasy VII Remake. Producer Yoshinori Kitase confirming the team is hard at work expanding on the work of the first game. Despite the turmoil within the soccer industry this year due to Covid-19 cancellations and postponements, eFootball PES 2020 also came within the top three. The final winner was Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. CyberConnect 2 is currently working on another big DLC for the game, although no details were forthcoming.
The Partner Award is given to the games developed in Japan/Asia with high ranking worldwide sales and “particularly noteworthy activity results.” Loosely translated, this is a variety of criteria decided by Sony that includes things like player numbers. Seven games won awards in this category: Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation 2, Black Desert, Nioh 2, Resident Evil 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon. In the process, Atlus promised more Persona titles for the future. The franchise celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, so there’s bound to be something planned.
Two Special Awards round out the list of winners. The first is given to the title developed outside the region that has gotten the highest sales in Japan/Asia over the past year. This award went to Apex Legends, with Respawn promising exciting updates on the game soon. The second Special Award went to the title developed by a Japanese/Asian developer in conjunction with SIE Worldwide Studios that amassed the highest worldwide sales this year. Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding was the winner here.
Finally, special mention goes out to Yoshinori Kitase; he turned up with a rather large sword to help him to collect FFVII‘s award. The entire event can still be seen on the PlayStation Japan Youtube channel if you want to witness this moment.
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
